Obamacare going down

Very interesting news today. Apparently the federal government has decided that the medical insurance exchanges for small business (or something) for Obamacare won't be ready on time, so they've delayed implementation of Obamacare for another year. Pushing it back to 2015 -- after the next mid-term elections. And I hardly think that's a coincidence.

I wrote "the insurance exchanges for small business (or something)" might not be ready because I'm not exactly sure if that's what's holding everything up. It may be that the feds don't quite understand what's holding everything up. Businesses can't get any straight answers from the feds about what they're supposed to do, and there are still at least a dozen states that have refused to set up the insurance exchanges. They're free to refuse, in which case, the feds say they will do it.

Additionally, the US Senate -- at least -- has voted to repeal the tax on medical devices that is part of the bill. No less a jughead than Senator Al Franken, clown prince... or rather senator from Minnesota, actually stood up in the Senate and recited a litany of reasons that the tax would pretty much destroy any innovation in medical devices (evertything from rubber gloves to prosthetic limbs), and how the tax penalizes the successful firms in the industry.

I -- and thousands of other people in the USA, the reasonably intelligent among us -- could have told Franken that, and probably did, before he voted for the damn bill. So perhaps spending a few years in the US Senate and actually confronting the issues head-on has ground away some of his sharper socialist edges. Who knows. Quite possibly he's simply not as blankly ignorant as he was four years ago, but I'm sure he makes up for his revelaton about medical taxes with stubborn blockheadedness in other areas.

Also, I think it was Senator Mitch McConnell who issued a photo of a stack of standard typing paper about 10 feet tall -- maybe even taller -- the 20,000+ regulations that Obamacare has spawned so far.

Have to laugh,. It's just impossible. No one will be able to track or monitor any of this.

Many of the regulations that have been publicly discussed -- and not many have been -- seem to contradict oithers.

Doctors don't know what to do, and a recent survey done by Pew Research, if I recall correctly, noted that 60% of doctors now in practice plan to retire or otherwise leave their practices over the next three years. Not enough medical students are coming up to replace them.

Insurance premiums have been steadily rising. At least one government agency reports that insurance premiums will increase anywhere from 20% to 100% when Obamacare is implemented. Insurance couild run $20,000.00 per year for a family of four.

A big issue is that with Obamacare requiring that small businesses with more than 50 full-time employees will be compelled to buy the cadillace Obamacar health care packages or pay a penalty. No one's hiring because of that, and many companies are contemplating reducing workers' hours to less than 30 per week. And most would prefer to pay the penalty for NOT providing insurance than to pay for the insurance. They're not being mean or stingy, just trying to survive.

And because of the above, the latest estimates indicate that about 70 million people who are now insured will lose their insurance when Obamacare goes into effect.

And wasn't Obamacare supposed to solve the problem of soemthing like 30 million uninsured?

Hate to dance a jig while singing, "Ha ha, told you so!" But, you know, "Ha ha! Told you so."

Considerable hopes that this killer legislation will see repeal or piecemeal demise before it ever goes into effect. It's a crock of shit, pie-in-the-sky nightmare scheme and it's not surprising that it's not even remotely workable.

Ha Ha! Told you so!

Socialism failing in Cyprus... and everywhere else

In case you don't pay attention to these things, in Cyprus, a small island nation that Turkey and Greece have been fond of fighting over for centuries... Cyprus is bankrupt and for the last couple weeks, the Cypriot government has been debating simply stealing citizens' money from the banks to pay off government debts.

Apparently Cyprus banks are to Russians what the Cayman Island banks have been to Americans -- that is, foreigners, and particularly Russians, park their funds there. So Cyprus is bankrupt and now has plans to simply take 40% of the funds from accounts totaling over $135,000.00, and a smaller percentage from smaller accounts (I think. That might have changed.)

So the government just goes and sucks out all the money from the banks to pay its debts? Money from private accounts held by private citizens?

In 2008, Argentina went bankrupt and seized all the money people had in their private retirement accounts to pay its debts. And truthfully, the US government has raided Social Security. In effect, it's no longer a separate account held in trust for retirees. What is in the Social Security trust fund ia bunch of IOUs from the USA's "general fund.":

So, I guess this all answers the question: "Hey, you blockheads in government -- do you think it's YOUR money?"

And -- in case you haven't heard this one -- some silly twit academic in the USA is suggesting that the US government seize a percentage of the money US citizens have in their 401(K) retirement accounts. That's here. In the USA. Think about that for a minute..... Money you worked for. Money you saved. Money withheld from yor paychecks, maybe matched to some extent by your employer.

Gone to pay for studies of duck genitalia, shrimp on treadmills, and some silly crap about Chinese prostitutes. (The last probably the result of government types figuring the odds on their getting some incurable disease while on a federally-funded junket.)

To pay for some fat-ass government union member to sit in beach in Florida.like a dead, bloated  a manatee washed up on the sand? I mean, Let's face it, if the Comrade has his way, no one but union workers are ever going to be able to retire. Because all the rest of us are bailing out those useless assholes so that they can donate their union dues to the democrat party.

All your work. All your planning. All your future... gone. Becasue the stupid shits in Washington don't have even have half a brain to divide up amongst them. And even less courage.

It's worth repeating again, and again, and again -- government doesn't produce one damn thing. They do not make any money. All the money the government has IT TAKES FROM US.

So go ahead, vote for a few more pie-in-the-sky socialsts. See how that works out for you.

"The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples' money." -- Margaret Thatcher, who had to do a big fix on that to get England to continue stumbling along economically, and only to fall right back into the same hole, so it seems.

The banks in Cyprus have been closed for two weeks. They're supposed to open tomorrow, and the government has limited withdrawl amounts to $3,900.00 per account. They "suspect" there may be a run on the banks. Duh.... Maybe they're finally getting something right.

That hole in your mattress starts looking better and better, doesn't it?

The "Appalling Race," not my favorite show anymore

I used to love the TV show, "The Amazing Race." It's the only reality show I could even tolerate. Every series starts out with about a dozen couples -- spouses, brothers, sisters, friends, parents-kids, whatever -- who have to chase clues to get around the world. In order to get their clues, they perform various tasks, like eating weird food, jumping out of airplanes, bungi jumping, constructing replica offerings to the gods of various cultures, etc. Every show, they end up at some checkpoint, and the last pair to arrive is eliminated from the race. At the end, there's usually only three couples left, and whoever finishes first wins $1 million.

I loved the show because it goes to so many different countries and cultures, and through the tasks, the contestants usually have to participate in some way in that country's culture and traditions. Very cool, I thought. But there's occasionally little incidents. I remember one episode where a cabbie in Morocco drove one pair of racers to what proved to be an enthusiastically jihadist village and left them there. Apparently the show's producers had to hassle with the embassies to ensure the racers' safety and get them back in the race.

Anyway, tonight the racers went to Hanoi, Vietnam. The show has sent people there in earlier series. No big deal. Except....

The task they had to do there was to watch a little live show of singing and dancing, memorize a couple lines from the show, and go into an adjoining room and find a poster -- one of dozens -- that displayed the words from the song.

Well, the racers only heard the songs in Vietnamese, but a translation ran at the bottom of the screen. One of the lines went, "Praise to the glorious communist party!"

What? she asks to an indiffierent TV set. Another entertainment, The Manchurian Candidate, came immediately to mind. Also visions of US POWs in various places being filmed as they mouth kind words and swear loyalty to a varied range of vicious dictatorships -- their other alternative being torture and death. And, of course, Hanoi Jane Fonda playing house on an anti-aircraft cannon. Among other things.

I turned the channel at that point. Went to the show's Facebook page and like dozens of other viewers, left a message about how disturbing this episode was. And the others had watched the whole show. Stronger stomachs than mine.

I learned from them that after the racers got hold of the correct poster, they were sent to a crashed B52 that had been shot down during the war to retrieve the next clue. The shattered plane is apparently a memorial of some kind. (I doubt it commemorates the same thing to the Vietnamese as it does to me, however.)

And the at the end of the show, it seems the producers decided to replay the "I love communism" song over the ending credits. Nice touch, nicely adding injury to insult.

I'm really appalled. Some people at the Facebook page talk about how the show is intended for us all to experience other cultures, and after all, the USA "invaded" Vietnam and the Vietnamese have every right to hate us.

I suggest that people who want to "experience" Hanoi should consult Senator John McCain about his very extended stay there. And, gosh, he even arrived via a crashed USAF aircraft!

The show is produced by Bruckhimer Films, heavily sponsored by Travelocity.

I'm never going to watch it again.

White House wants public to feel the pain

Interesting development over the sequester deal. The sequester has gone through. The budget cuts it proposed are now current law.

The thing is, the sequester didn't cut any existing budgets. It cut the growth rate of those budgets. Like, suppose you make $1,000.00 a month and your boss had said you were getting a raise to $1,100.00 a month. Then he comes back and says, "I can't give you that whole raise, but I will give you $1,075.00 a month."

That's about what the sequester does -- and in the correct proportion. The sequester reduces the 2013 growth rate of goverment spending by 2.5%.  Oh my God! How can they squeak by??

Anyway, the point is, the government has as much and even more money than it had in 2012, it just doesn't have as much as it wanted. I'm not even sure why they have to cut. After all, the Comrade did just eke out a tax increase from Congress. Can't they leave their hot mess of government acitivities in place? Except the sequester does mandate certain cuts.

So what's interesting is that the Comrade had toured the nation, raving maniacally to anyone he could buttonhole, that the sequester would bring on a plague of locusts, fire would rain from the sky, and the oceans would dry up. And stuff like that.

And so far, absolutely nothing has changed, except the White House has canceled tours. Just heartrending. What will we do without tours of the White House -- which were conducted by volunteers, by the way, not by paid staff.

On the news, they were talking about a cabinet meeting the Comrade had about the sequester. Apparently someone in the Agriculture Department asked how much "latitude" he had in making cuts in his department. That is, how much flexibility does he have in reducing the funding for certain programs and/or eliminating others?

His answer from the White House said, "You need to make sure you are not contradicting what the president said the impact would be."

That is, "Make it hurt." Take their first-born. Pour kerosene in their gas tanks. Shut down the police and fire departments, the public schools. Think what you can do the hurt the citizens by denying them services -- especially critical services -- they've already paid for.

And coincidentally, Hugo Chavez, ruthless tyrant of Venezuela, died yesterday, but not before his people (that is, someone in his inner circle) claimed that the USA had "attacked" Chavez with cancer. Frankly, I should think his death from cancer was probably due more to the crappy health care he got in Cuba, but that's just me.

So perhaps if we cancel Comradecare in the USA, that would save a whole bunch of money and the excellent health care that we already have. Or we can the Comrade turn the USA into Cuba.

So, to conclude: with Chavez gone, perhaps the Comrade should start thinking about Venezuela as a place where he might rise to power and push people around. And a question: Will he miss Chavez as a role model?

Somebody's ripe for impeachment.

The worm turns... and the White House backs off

Just looked up the phrase, "The worm turns." It comes from either the Bible or Shakespeare, or possibly both.... the whole phrase is: "Tread on a worm and it will turn."

That means, in the American language, "Don't tread on me."

So to explain... the Comrade pushed this sequester thing just a little too far. Flapping his jaws, giving out stern looks like a daddy whose deliquent kids have sorely disappointed him, threatening to shut down airports and/or make people stand in line four or five hours for their probing by Homeland Security, et, etc.... well, he took it too damn far.

Just a couple items:

#1 -- Journalist Bob Woordward, partner in the Woodward-Bernstein combination that exposed the Watergate scandal in the Nixon era.... Bob Woodward, who's so damn careful about what he says it drives you almost crazy (like listening to someone who stutters -- you want to finish their sentences for them.) Well, Bob Woodward published a book back before Christmas that was kind of a close-up look at the Comrade's White House. Woodward wrote a book about George W. Bush as president, too, I believe. Woodward's been a commentator on Fox as well as on other news channels, and he's regarded as one of the most painstaking and objective journalists around.

So in his book, way back when, he told the story about how the president and Jack Loo cooked up the scheme for sequester. The Comrade has stated that they didn't really mean to do the cuts. They just wanted a plan that would be so burdensome and awful that congress would be forced to do something about spending and a budget.

Bob Woodward recently pointed out, just incidentally, that the sequester that the Comrade has been ranting and raving about, was actually the Comrade's own idea.

And it's very much worth noting that the House of Representatives has passed a couple plans to head off the sequester -- and that the Comrade said would veto them. Not to worry, the Comrade's Senate Dawg, Harry Reid, never let those proposals see the light of day in the Senate.

So the poor ol' Comrade is hoisted on his own petard. (That means getting all tangled up on your own lance, basically.)

But back to Bob Woodward. Apparently the White House heard about Woodward's big mouth. Woodward got an email from "a senior official" in the White House telling him he was all wrong, and he'd "regret staking out that claim." (No more access for you, pal, and wait until I set Andrea Mitchell and Matt Lauer on you.)

Hey, Comrade Asshole, I know you don't think much of freedom of the press, unless the press is as pathetically slavish as Chris Mathews or Rachel Maddow, and even though you routinely shit on the Constitution, you might try reading a little history.

To wit: The thing that set the American Revolution into motion was the British Stamp Act, which taxed colonial printers, paper, newspapers, etc. They -- including Ben Franklin -- were very unhappy about that. It hurt their business. As it happens, you piss off the press and you're pretty much screwed. After all, weren't they the ones who got the Comrade elected in their first place?

Let's see what they do to him now. Let's see if any of them beside Bob Woodward have a spine.


#2 -- And this is a frigging nightmare, and should be grounds for impeachment. Just recently -- though I'm not sure exactly when -- ICE, the Immigration enforcement people -- released 500 ciminal illegal aliens from some holding pen they were keeping them in. Apparently ICE was warned that sequester was coming and to figure out where to cut. They choose to let loose some pretty high-level criminals upon the public in Arizona. And didn't even notify officials in Arizona. They could have at least suggested that citizens make sure to lock their doors. Or maybe they could have just dropped these criminals off at the border... give them back to Mexico. Except the Mexicans won't have them back -- those suckers are that evil.

And, as usual, the Comrade knew nothing about this. The White House, as usual, is entirely blameless. They know nothing! They see nothing! The Sgt. Schultz defense, as usual.

But in my mind, it's the Comrade's Revenge -- take money out of his budget and he'll set a pack of murderers, rapists, burglars, drug lords and gang thugs on your sorry ass. Delays in the airport will be the least of your problems.

This is getting more like Germany in the 1930s every day.

Didn't I tell you? Let the Comrade run -- give him enough rope and he'll hang himself. He's too ambitious and too convinced of his own greatness to exercise any kind of reasonable judgment.

But apparently some time last night, he kinda, sorta, maybe admitted, "Hey! I was joking. It ain't gonna be that bad!"

What a damn fool, n'est-ce pas? (That means, in French, "Isn't it?")

Let sequester begin

Well, I was shocked to turn on the TV today and see John Boehner and other House Republicans giving a brief press conference to state that they aren't going to do anything to stop the sequester. Boehner suggested that the president get off the campaign trail and talk to Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader, who's done absolutely nothing for the last four years except read a little cowboy poetry.

See, a couple years ago over one or another budget crisis, the Comrade suggested guillotine-like cuts to the federal budget if congress couldn't come up with a better plan. This was in trade, I believe, for raising the debt ceiling.

Well, over the years the Republicans have developed and passed seveal bills that cut the federal budget in thoughtful ways. They even managed to gain some support for these bills from democrats in the House.

The bills went up to the Senate, and there they sit. Harry Reid won't even allow them to be introduced on the floor, and the Comrade promised to veto them, anyway.

Meanwhile, the Comrade cranks up the propaganda machine -- including ABC, CBS, and NBC tv networks, and blasts the Republicans for doing nothing about the budget.

OK... well the Comrade was on the campaign trail for the last couple years, and apparently he's been on vacation and/or golfing since then, so maybe he never heard about those House budget proposals. Or maybe the Comrade was so preoccupied preparing for the Inauguration and recycling his State of the Union address ("Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the greatest of them all?") that he totally forgot about that two-year-old proposal for across-the-board budget cuts.

'Cause over the last week or so, he's been gallivanting across the country, waving his arms and shouting like Jeremiah Wright about how the Republicans are about to steal the bread from the mouths of babes, and the like.... shut down airports, lay off police, firemen, and teachers, stop meat inspections. He seems to have forgotten that the sequester was his idea -- his and John Loo's -- the guy he's just nominated for Treasury Secretary, and also that he promised to veto any alternate plans.

Well, not only Boehner, but Eric Cantor and espeically Kevin McCarthy, House Whip, have gone to great lengths today to explain that the sequester cuts amount to about 2.5% of the federal budget. And the USA borrows that much every four weeks. In addition, the cuts would maintain the federal govt at levels approximating 2009 federal spending. Yet somehow we managed to keep the airports open and teachers in the classroom, etc., in 2009.

But bigger and better than this -- THE REPUBLICANS FINALLY GREW A SET!!

Stand tall, ye boys in Washington.We shall not be moved, etc. and any more hokey slogans you can think of.

Before sequester - where's the cuts?

The liar-in-chief promised not even a month ago that if he could tax the rich, he'd slow down his crazy-ass, irresponsible, OCD spending. So the congessional clowns agreed to tax increases on the rich.

And now the liar-in-chief is on the road.... asking to raise taxes again. No cuts. He apparently was only joking when he promised any cuts.

Ha-ha. The joke's on the stupid sons of bitches who voted for him. 'Course most of them don't pay taxes. Their daddies do. They're on the taking end of the redistribution equation, not the side that pays for it.

So now sequester is upon us, with "automatic" spending cuts no one really wants -- but probably better than nothing.

The sequester was the Comrade's idea.

Over the last couple years, the Republicans in the House have offered several plans as alternatives to the sequester -- and they've had dem support. The Comrade promised to veto these proposals and the Senate pigeonholed them.

So Comrade liar-in-chief is, yes, a big fat liar. An irresponsible spendthrift, a deceiver and a fraud. And apparently relentless in his drive to destroy America.

How much more evidence do you need?

The more important question: How do we get rid of him?